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60 Minutes walked the halls of Parliament in search of an answer to our student’s question.

Question Time

There is an old Parliamentary joke which goes, “it’s called question time, not answer time”.

But the joke is on us because it’s true.

Every sitting day at 2pm the nation’s federal politicians gather for the ritual of Question Time.

It is the images from that which are beamed into our homes and, mostly, they are not pretty.

Petty politicking, name calling and long-winded non-answers are the order of the day.

Is it any wonder voters are tuning out?

The man who has the job of umpire is Tony Smith.

The Victorian Liberal MP has been Speaker for three years and has served in Parliament for 17.

He readily admits that Question Time could be better than it is but cautions against the argument that it is a waste of time.

Speaker Tony Smith has the job of keeping things under control in Question Time. (60 Minutes)

Australia’s inherited the Westminster system from Britain but its take on Question Time is quite different; it’s just about the only Parliament in the world where the Prime Minister has to answer questions on every sitting day.

And he, like all those 60 Minutes interviewed, said politics was supposed to be a robust contest of ideas and that democracy would not be well served by a chamber filled with people in furious agreement.

But the Question Time combat only takes up about 75 minutes in a long Parliamentary day.

Often the rest is spent quietly working out compromises in the national interest.

While 60 Minutes was with the Speaker we witnessed a small piece of history; the bills toughening the penalties for food tampering were brought to him to be signed.

The strawberry tampering crisis meant that the bills had passed through all stages of debate, with the support of all parties, in just two hours.

Julie Bishop

Julie Bishop says politicians from overseas have been calling her for an explanation of what's going on in Australia. (60 Minutes)

Just a month ago Julie Bishop literally had the world at her feet, as Australia’s foreign minister.

When Malcolm Turnbull fell the then-deputy threw her hat into the ring to be leader but was knocked out in the first round of a three-way battle.

Ms Bishop resigned and has moved to the backbench.

When 60 Minutes caught up with her, she was setting up in a new office on the outer ring of Parliament, a long way from the power and prestige of the ministerial wing.

Ms Bishop says bewildered foreign ministers from around the world have been calling her asking for an explanation on what’s going on in Australia.

“There have been some rather unkind comments about Australia being the Italy of the South Pacific and the coup capital of the world,” she said.

Democracy in decline

It might be called Old Parliament House but inside the flame of democracy is burning bright.

The building that served as the home of the Australian Parliament from 1927 to 1988 now houses the Museum of Australian Democracy.

Its director, Daryl Karp, runs an institution that both celebrates Australia’s rich democratic history but keeps its finger on the pulse of how people view their national institutions.

And, with the help of the University of Canberra’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, it has tracked an alarming decline in people’s faith in democracy since 2007.

“The public are saying things are getting worse,” Ms Karp said.

“People are increasingly dissatisfied and distrusting of those that are supposedly there to represent them.”

She says three key things have come through in the research about what Australians want from their representatives: empathy; integrity; and that politics shouldn’t be a blood sport.

Two unlikely mates

Anthony Albanese, universally known as “Albo”, is one of the most recognisable faces in politics and widely regarded as a straight talker.

Liberal Craig Laundy is less well known but his career was on the rise before it was cut short with the dispatch of his close friend Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Laundy is a publican by trade and Albo has a beer named after him.

Their Sydney electorates border each other and they are mates.

Both are worried that a decade of divisive politics and leadership churn has done bone deep damage to body politic.

The settled in over a beer to discuss it.

'Albo' said his combative instincts had tempered in favour of a constructive approach to working across the aisle. (60 Minutes)Chris Uhlmann joined Anthony Albanese and Craig Laundy for a beer. (60 Minutes)Ed Husic says social media has made politics more combative. (60 Minutes)

Ed Husic

If there is one recent moment that captures the ability of both sides of Parliament to come together it must be the image of a Sydney-based Muslim Labor MP embracing a Melbourne-born Jewish Liberal.

The image was captured after Labor’s Ed Husic had given an emotional speech in response to Senator Fraser Anning’s racially inflammatory first speech.

He said he had an overwhelming response to the speech and it was a lesson that people were sick of the constant bickering and wanted more evidence that the nation’s representatives were capable of working together.